Cardonio Bounty Campaign:What is an ICO Bounty Program and How to Incorporate it into an ICO Campain

The crypto-world is becoming bigger and interesting as we speak. The industry experts are ever restless, launching new alt-coins almost every day. But this is not the only thing that is being done in this industry. Once you start following the news, you will see a lot of new terms and activities that quite frankly don’t make any sense to some people as well. One of these terms is ICO bounty program. You must be wondering, Wait, what is that?

If you had a chance to get familiar with some unorthodox marketing techniques in the past, then there is a good chance you can guess what ICO bounty is all about. And no, it doesn’t involve anyone becoming a pirate at any given point in time. Let’s see what ICO bounties are, and what role they play in an ICO campaign.

What is an ICO Bounty?

The Initial Coin Offering is an effort made by cryptocurrency startups to raise money for their project. Everything starts with the whitepaper, which translates into a business plan. The whitepaper usually contains:

• A detailed explanation of what the project is about.
• The reason why the project was started, and whether there’s a real need in the world for it.
• A financial plan, where the key point is how much money the startup needs to get things going.
• The precise number of newly created crypto tokens that the project creators will keep for themselves.
• Information on whether the startup will accept only cryptocurrencies or regular cash as well.
• The end date for the ICO campaign.

During the ICO campaign, a cryptocurrency startup’s main goal is to raise as much money as they can. On the other hand, investors are motivated to invest in it by the quality of the whitepaper, especially by the part where the real need for the cryptocurrency is explained, and the hope that the cryptocurrency’s price will spike after the plan launches.

The more people learn about the ICO, the better, simply because the number of potential investors rises. This is where the ICO bounty comes in. Some startups don’t have the money to hire PR and marketing firms to help them raise money. An ICO bounty is an efficient and cheap way to spread the word about the ICO by outsourcing marketing to regular people.

An ICO bounty can be something very simple, such as logo creation, a mention in the comments of a popular YouTube video, a full YouTube video, forum posts, content creation, and so on. Upon completing it, the startup rewards the bounty hunters with the brand new cryptocurrency.

What is an ICO Bounty Program?

The ICO bounty program is a specific marketing effort a startup decides to implement. The more detailed the ICO bounty program is, the greater the chances for the startup to reach success. ICO bounty programs help startups in two distinctive ways.

First, they help them spread the word of their ICO, and, secondly, bounty programs can help startups get the bugs out of their code by using high-end programmers which they cannot afford to have on their payroll.

An ICO bounty program may involve all sorts of activities ranging from signature and social media campaigns, to content creation and translation campaigns as well. Companies like ICO Bounty incorporates and offers multiple types of ICO bounty programs, both pre-ICO and post-ICO ones. All of this isn’t done in an erratic fashion. Over the years startups in the crypto world have learned a lot. Let’s see what types of ICO bounty programs there are.

The Framework and the Types

Before you decide which ICO bounty will work best for your startup, you have to get familiar with the ICO bounty framework as a whole.

The term pre-ICO bounty programs, as the name implies, refers to all the bounty efforts made before the ICO launch. Their primary purpose is to create the buzz and get your marketing ball rolling. The ultimate goal is to significantly increase awareness and get investors interested in your startup and upcoming ICO.

Pre-ICO bounty programs include the following activities:

• Social media campaigns – these bounties are designed to use the followers of the participants’ social media accounts to raise awareness of the ICO. It is important to distribute rewards depending on the engagement levels generated by the “bounty hunters”. The most popular social media platforms used in this instance are Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
• Content creation – many of the people interested in cryptocurrencies have blogs with large audiences. These bounties are designed to motivate them to write articles about your ICO on their popular blogs.
• Signature bounties – these are the most popular ones, as they are open to all the people at the Bitcointalk forum. Startups usually restrict these bounties only for people who have a Jr. Member rank or above on this forum.
• Post-ICO bounty programs are launched after the money for the ICO launch has been raised, to collect the feedback from the community so that improvements can be made. But, spreading the word to as many people as possible still remains the underlying goal of this effort. The most popular bounties for the post-ICO stage go as follows:
• Translation – documents like the whitepaper, the official cryptocurrency website, and the Bitcointalk ANN thread are translated into several world languages.
• Bug Hunting and Reporting – every cryptocurrency platform and software has bugs, especially when it is young. Bug reporting bounties are designed to motivate people to report the bugs as soon as they discover them.

Costs and Benefits

All the information so far clearly implies that the benefits of ICO bounty programs are huge. They offer unique opportunities for startups on a limited budget to spread the word about their ICO, get more people interested in investing in it, and make improvements to the platform after the ICO goes live.

When it comes to the costs, they are next to none. Some of the blockchain startups do hire bounty campaign managers, which significantly increases the costs of running a bounty campaign.

You can also consider getting listed on websites frequently visited by ICO bounty hunters to engage as many of them as possible. In any case, all the costs associated with these efforts are significantly lower than the costs of hiring a marketing or PR firm.

Famous ICO Bounty Programs

One of the most famous ICO bounty programs was launched by Rentberry. The idea was quite genius – they used Blockchain technology and smart contracts to enable people to enjoy an easier rental process, and their ICO bounty program is what made it possible for the project to start.

Another one is VRT World, a startup devoted to developing a decentralized global platform for all VR enthusiasts in the world.

People can take part in all sorts of VR activities and get exclusive access to the cutting-edge VR technologies on this platform. Their bounty fund is around 2% of all sold VR tokens. The majority of the bounty fund (30%) is reserved for the signature and avatar campaign bounty.

BitNautic also leveraged ICO bounty programs to incentivize the people to invest in their decentralized shipping and cargo platform. Around 5% of their total coin supply is reserved for bounty campaigns. More than half of their bounty budget is reserved for mainstream media, social media, and signature bounties.

Hopefully, the term ICO bounty is closer to you than before. As you can see the ICO bounties have a lot of marketing potential for startups on a limited budget. You can incorporate them into pre and post-ICO efforts to maximize their effectiveness.